This invention relates in general to production line handling of objects such as poultry. More particularly, the invention pertains to the handling of severed poultry necks or the like in a poultry processing system.
Production line processing and packaging of poultry products for consumer marketing in accordance with current practice, involves the conveyance of leg-suspended poultry to a cutter at which poultry necks are severed from eviscerated poultry bodies. After chilling of the bodies and severed necks, some of the necks are reassembled with the bodies at a stuffing station. At the stuffing station, wrapped necks as well as livers and giblets are often placed in cavities of poultry bodies prior to packaging. Some of the severed necks, on the other hand, are deboned and the meat thereof sold separately as a poultry by-product.
The proportion of severed necks reassembled with the poultry bodies depends on product demands or requirements, such as the relative number of orders for whole poultry, cut-up poultry parts, by-products, etc. The selection of the severed necks for reassembly with poultry bodies which are sold at a higher price per pound, or for separate processing as by-products sold at a lower price per pound, is presently accomplished in a random or somewhat haphazard fashion. The relatively low selling price per pound of the poultry necks and the relatively small weight range associated therewith may account for such random selection. For example, the weight of chicken necks generally varies between 40 grams and 110 grams, with an average weight of 70 grams. Nevertheless, with high production line processing of large quantities of poultry, a more judicious selection of severed necks for reassembly with poultry bodies could result in a significant improvement in profits if such selection were efficiently handled in the product line operation of a poultry processing plant.
It is therefore an important objective of the present invention to provide for the efficient and judicious selection of severed portions of objects such as poultry necks for reassembly with poultry bodies in a production line installation such as a poultry processing plant.